All the
passages below are taken from D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ book “Life in Christ:
Studies in 1 John.” It was preached in the 1940’s and re-published as one
volume (formerly in five Volumes) in 2002 by Crossway Books.

These things have I written unto you that
believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal
life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God. 1 John 5:13

I COME AGAIN TO
THIS VERSE because it does seem to me that it is such a vitally important one
that we must try to gain the full benefit we were intended to gain from it. We
have looked at it in general, from the merely mechanical standpoint, a kind of
summary in and of itself of the entire teaching of the Apostle. We have reminded
ourselves that John here is saying, “That is why I have written the letter in
order that you might have this certain knowledge that you possess eternal life’;
and we have considered John’s own particular tests and applied them to ourselves
in order to make sure that we really do possess this eternal life about which he
is writing.

Now I repeat,
this matter is of vital importance. Indeed, it would not be an exaggeration to
say that it is the great theme, the greatest theme even, in the New Testament
itself. It is the whole object of the New Testament, and it is extraordinary, is
it not, how constantly we seem to forget that. We are interested in forgiveness,
we want to know that our sins are forgiven and that we do not go on to
punishment and perdition, and we are interested in living a good life. But for
some remarkable reason we tend to persist in forgetting that the ultimate
thing that is offered us in the New Testament is nothing less than this very
quality of eternal life. The New Testament is really a book that is, in a
sense, just meant to tell us that this is what God offers us in Jesus Christ. Is
not that the real object that every part of the New Testament has in view?

Why, for
instance, do you think that the four Gospels were ever written? Why did the
early church not just go on preaching the message of salvation and leave it at
that? Now, there can be only one real answer to that question, and it was the
answer given by John towards the end of his own Gospel. Having written it, he
sums it up like this: ‘And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of
his disciples, which are not written in this book: but these are written, that
ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye
might have life through his name’ (John 20:30-31). That was why John wrote his
Gospel; he was led by the Holy Spirit to do so for that reason.

And what is
true of John is equally true of the writers of the other three Gospels. They
wrote them not only to give a portrait of the Lord Jesus Christ, but also in
order to give this proof and demonstration that Jesus of Nazareth is none other
than the Son of God and is indeed the Christ of God, the Messiah, the one who
has come into the world bringing life to men and women. You find this as a theme
running right through the Gospels. Take that great word which our Lord said to
the people: ‘I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it
more abundantly’ (John 10:10); nothing less than that. So we must be clear about
the fact that He is the Son of God and that He is the one who brings life.

In the same way
the book of Acts is designed to do the same thing. It has that great evidence
about His ascension and about the sending of the Holy Spirit on the early
church. That is the final proof, as we have already seen, of the fact that He is
the Son of God, the Messiah, the promise of the Father about which the Old
Testament speaks so much. At last the promise has come to us, and this is the
promise of the Holy Spirit, that by Him and through Him we receive this eternal
life. And all the records that you have in the Acts of the Apostles are nothing
but an elaboration of that one theme. Those first preachers went around
saying that they were witnesses of these things; they said, ‘We heard His
preaching, we saw His crucifixion, we saw Him buried, we saw the stone rolled
over the mouth of the grave. But we saw Him risen again, we saw the empty grave,
we saw Him ascend, and we received this gift of the Holy Spirit.’ That is the
testimony!

The
Apostle Paul was as ‘one born out of due time’ (1 Corinthians 15:8). He had not
been one of the disciples; he had not heard Christ’s teaching in that sense. But
he was given a special sight of the risen Lord in order that he might bear his
witness to the fact that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, the one,
therefore, who gives more abundant life to mankind. Furthermore, as I am never
tired of pointing out, that is the great object that lies behind the writers of
the New Testament epistles. These letters were written to people who had already
believed the gospel. They were written to churches; they were not open letters
to the world, but particular letters to groups of Christian people or to
individual Christian believers. But why were they written? They were written
because all these Christians lived in a difficult and gainsaying world. They had
their difficulties; they were tempted perhaps at times to doubt; they were
sometimes defeated by Satan and were falling into temptation. Various things
were going wrong in various ways, and the letters were written to them in order
that they might be strengthened and encouraged and helped to go forward on their
journey.

And the great
message to all of them is just this self-same message, that everything they need
is in the Lord Jesus Christ; that they have but to realise that it is His life
that they need and that without it they can do nothing. So the argument of
the New Testament from beginning to end is just that Christ Jesus, the Son of
God, came into the world to give us this eternal life, and this is the most
momentous and the most important thing that has ever come to mankind.

In other words,
we must once and for ever get rid of this idea that the New Testament is but
a book that contains an exalted teaching that we are meant to practise and to
put into action. Not at all! It is not an exhortation to us to rise to the level
of some wonderful teaching; it is an announcement, it is a proclamation! It
calls itself ‘good news,’ and the amazing good news is that God is giving this
gift of eternal life to all those who have realised their need of it and are
ready to receive it. That is the whole argument, and it is one that is based
very solidly upon facts. So the Gospels and all the details were written in
order to demonstrate to us that this is not some wonderful idea, some great
dream, or some sublime thought. No; this is something concrete: a person has
appeared in this world who is, in and of Himself, the bearer of this eternal
life that God is giving to mankind. So the one thing to be certain about is that
we know Him.

In a
sense, therefore, the New Testament says that the greatest tragedy that can ever
happen is that anyone should be uncertain about this, that anyone should go on
still searching or hoping or saying, ‘Of course I am not to have that while I am
in this life and world; perhaps after death ...?‘‘Not at all!’ says John; ‘these
things I have written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God, that
ye may know that ye have eternal life’---now, not at some future time.

Now, I put it
like that in order that I may lead up to this question: why is it that there is
anyone who is at all in difficulty about this subject? We have looked at some of
what I would call the purely theological reasons. Some people, because of their
view of faith, seem to think that this is impossible, and we showed how that
contradicted the New Testament teaching. But I want now to give some more
practical difficulties that I often find mentioned when people discuss this
together. There are those who seem to be in trouble about this matter and
uncertain as to whether they have eternal life or not, because they will persist
in thinking of it in terms of experience, or in terms of feeling, rather than in
the terms that are indicated here. That very often happens in this way.
There is always this fatal tendency to standardise the experience of certain
notable or outstanding incidents and illustrations.

This is
something, I suppose, that is more or less inevitable. There is a tendency in
mankind to pay great attention to and to concentrate upon the unusual and the
spectacular. We seem to do that instinctively; I suppose it is one of the
results of the Fall. Anything unusual or exceptional always attracts attention
much more than the usual and the ordinary; that is why some sort of calamity or
extraordinary thing in nature always attracts and interests us much more than
the perpetual and wonderful things of nature from day to day. Wordsworth
discovered that when he said about himself at the end of his great Ode:

To me the meanest flower that blows can
give

Thoughts that do often lie too deep
for tears.

That is right,
and we ought all to put it like that. But the trouble with most of us is that
because it is always there we do not marvel at it; that little flower in the
hedgerow does not give rise in us thoughts that ‘lie too deep for tears.’ But if
we see a tree struck by lightning we are interested because it is unusual,
because it is exceptional.

Now,
we tend to do that self-same thing in the whole matter of Christian experience.
I attribute this to the Fall, and, of course, one must point out in passing that
this is something that tends to be organised and often becomes a business. Those
who produce books know that the spectacular always appeals to the mind; so they
pick out these exceptional cases and give them great publicity. So we ordinary
people who read about them say, ‘That is marvellous. If only that had happened
to me, then I should know that I have eternal life.’ But it has not, and
therefore the query arises in my mind as to whether I have eternal life or not.
This is the tendency to think of it in terms of experience or feeling, something
that comes to us suddenly. I may have gone on for months and years living at a
certain level, and suddenly I get some thrilling experience, and I know that
from then on all is well. Thus we tend to say that is the only way in which this
certainty is to be obtained, and we may well spend a lifetime in waiting for the
unusual and the spectacular.

But all that,
of course, is just to contradict the essential New Testament teaching. The
New Testament never lays stress upon the way in which this comes to us; what it
is interested in is the fact that it has come. How often, in dealing with
enquirers after salvation, does one have to point out that the New Testament
never says, ‘Whosoever feeleth shall be saved,’ but ‘whosoever believeth.’
People often say, ‘In a sense I do accept that teaching; but, you know, I cannot
say that I have felt anything.’ To which the simple reply is that the New
Testament does not insist upon feeling. It says, do you believe; are you
prepared to venture your all upon this? So it is sufficient for you to say, ‘I
live by this; whether I feel or whether I do not does not matter; we are not
saved by feeling but by believing.’

And it is
exactly the same in this matter of assurance, with this question of knowing that
we have eternal life. Let me use an illustration that I once heard an old
preacher use. He pointed out that two men may arrive at the end of a journey
with their clothes wet all through. But if you enquired as to how it happened to
the two men, you might find that it happened in a different way in each case.
One man might say that he set out on the journey with the sun shining
brilliantly. He had not brought an umbrella or a macintosh as there was no
suggestion it was going to rain; but halfway along the road, suddenly the clouds
gathered and a veritable downpour took place, and in a moment he was soaked
through. The other man’s story is a very different one. There was a kind of
drizzle all the way through the journey, so he could not tell you when he got
wet. The first man could, and the second man could not, but what really matters
is not how the two men got wet, but the fact that they are both wet all through.
Whether it happened suddenly or imperceptibly is utterly irrelevant.

So, the vital
question is not whether I can point to some vital experience in my life in which
I was given certain assurance. The vital question for me is this: as I face
these tests in this first epistle of John, do I know that I have life? Whether I
have the same experience as somebody else or not, as I examine the tests of life
that are given can I say that in spite of my not having had that climactic
experience or that thrilling feeling I must have life or I could not say yes to
these questions?

Now thinking of
it in terms of experience and feeling is a very common cause of trouble. God
grant, if there is anyone who has been held in bondage by that kind of
difficulty, that they may see the folly of it and may see that what matters, if
I may so put it, is not precisely how and when we were born, but the fact that
we are alive!

But the
second difficulty is this: there are those who feel that before they can say
they have eternal life, they ought to be perfect and sinless. They say, ‘It
is a very great thing to claim that I know I have eternal life, but surely
before I can claim that, I ought to be in a position to say that there is no sin
and no failure in my life. After all,’ they say, ‘eternal life is a very
wonderful thing, but I cannot say I have it. I am conscious of the fact that I
fall and fail and sin; and surely while I am in that condition I cannot make the
claim that I have it.’ That view, again, is very common.

The simple
reply is that John has already dealt with that in the first chapters of this
very epistle where he has gone out of his way to say, ‘If we say that we have no
sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins,
he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all
unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his
word is not in us’ (1:8-10). The whole of the New Testament, in a sense, is
constantly repeating this self-same argument. I wonder whether I can help with
regard to this particular difficulty by putting it like this: not only does the
New Testament not tell us that we must be able to claim sinless perfection
before we can claim we are the possessors of eternal life, but I go so far as to
assert that the New Testament itself teaches us quite plainly and clearly
that the fact that there is a real struggle in our lives is proof in and of
itself of life. ‘For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit
against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other; so that ye
cannot do the things that ye would’ (Galatians 5:17).

Now, I know
that this is teaching that we may wrest to our own confusion, but it is New
Testament teaching, and there is a sense in which all New Testament teaching is
dangerous. I mean that its teaching is so deep that if we want to misuse it we
can do so; hence you have antinomianism. So it means this: before we receive the
gift of eternal life, we are dead in trespasses and in sin. There is a stage in
which we are at peace; there is no struggle. Of course, we may have heard the
moral teaching that is glibly applied by the world, and in our own way we may be
concerned and may be striving to reach up to a certain level. But that is not
the struggle the New Testament speaks of. The New Testament says that when we
receive the gift of eternal life, a new man comes into us, so that we are now
two men, and the two are different and contrary---the spirit and the flesh---and
there is a struggle and a conflict.

Now those
who are aware of that, who though they sin and fail are aware of the fact that
there are these two men in them, that there is a struggle between the
two---these people have given proof positive that they have received the gift of
eternal life. There is no spiritual struggle in the life of unbelievers. There
may be a moral struggle, there may be a struggle to live up to a certain code
that they have set up, they may struggle to do certain things and if they do not
achieve them they are ashamed of themselves---but I am not referring to that. I
am referring to a spiritual struggle, to those who are aware of a conflict
between two essential things, the one of God and the other of themselves. So you
must not allow the devil to depress and discourage you because you occasionally
fall into sin or because you say, ‘I am not satisfied with my achievements.’ If
there is this struggle in a spiritual sense, then, according to the New
Testament, that of itself is proof that you have eternal life.

Or, to put it
slightly differently, there are many who do not say that we must be sinless and
perfect before we can make this claim, but after reading the lives of some of
the outstanding saints they look at themselves and say, ‘Can I claim that I have
eternal life when I look at that man or woman?’ You must have had that
experience; after, for example, reading the life of a man like Hudson Taylor you
may have felt you were never a Christian at all. If you have not, there is
something wrong with you, for I would regard that as the normal reaction of any
Christian. You contrast yourself and you say, ‘How can I say I have eternal life
when I see such a difference between that man and myself?’ and the devil would
have us believe that we have no life at all.

Well, again, if
we believe that, we are just flying in the face of plain, clear New Testament
teaching. The Scripture tells us that we are born into this Christian life as
babes, babes in Christ. John in this epistle has been writing to ‘little
children,’‘young men and old men’; he has a classification and a division (see
the second chapter). All that development is possible in this life, so that I
think we can answer this particular difficulty by saying, and thank God for
this, that a little life is nevertheless life. The baby that was born an hour
ago is as much alive as I am; the fact that he is a baby does not mean he is not
alive. He is not full-grown, he is not developed, he cannot think and reason, he
cannot speak and express himself, but he has life. The babe is as much alive as
the old man, and that is the New Testament teaching. So do not let the devil
discourage you and rob you in that way; if you are alive at all, you have
life.

One of the most
gracious words, I think, in the Gospels is that precious word spoken by our Lord
where he quotes Isaiah and says, ‘The smoking flax he will not quench.’ When you
look at that flax you may wonder whether there is any fire there at all; it
seems absolutely lifeless. But it is all right---there is fire, there is
something there; and the smoking flax He will not quench. He will, rather, fan
it until it becomes a flame. Though you may have but little life, hold on to the
fact that you have life, and thank God for it.

But to sum it
all up, we fail to remember that this thing is life, and life is something that
shows itself in different ways. Life does not only show itself in feeling and
experience---it does so in performing some of the most ordinary common tasks in
life; and that is a true test to apply to one’s profession of faith. If I have
this manifestation of life that John has indicated, I am not interested in
feelings, I am not interested in other people’s experiences. I face the tests of
life, and I see that these things are in me; therefore I must be alive, for a
dead man cannot do things like that and would not be like that.

So I would
put it in a practical form at this low level. If you are concerned about this
question of eternal life, if you feel you have not got it and if it is your
greatest ambition to know that you have got it, then you may know that you have
got it or you would not have this desire. If you feel that you are empty, if you
feel you are nothing, if you feel you are poor and wretched and blind, if you
hate your inclination to sin and have any suspicion of a feeling of
self-loathing and hatred, you can take it from me that you have eternal life,
for no one ever experiences such things until the life of God comes into his or
her soul.

There are
some further reasons why we should make sure that we have this eternal life. If
only we realised the value of this, we would not rest for a moment until we were
absolutely certain. Here are some of the reasons: the life that is offered us is
nothing less than the life of Jesus Christ; the life you see in Him is the life
that He offers. ‘I am come,’ he says, ‘that they might have life, and that they
might have it more abundantly’ (John 10:10). It is His own life; He gives
Himself for the life of the world. We must eat of His flesh and drink of His
blood; that means we partake of Him, not the sacrament---we take of Him. ‘The
words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life,’ He says (John
6:63).

In other
words, the life that is offered us is the life of God Himself. What an amazing,
what a wondrous thought! Yes, but let me go further and say that this life that
is offered us is an everlasting life. I know we are often told that eternal life
means a quality of life, but it also means duration, and thank God that it does.
‘Eternal’ includes everlasting, and that means that it is a life that, once I
have it, can never be taken away from me. Read the tenth chapter of John. If
God gives me His life, and if His life enters into my life, if I am born again
of that divine seed, that is an action that is irreversible. Our Lord says of His sheep, ‘My Father,
which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out
of my Father’s hand’ (John 10:29). To me, that is one of the most glorious
and amazing things we can ever know, that already there is started in us here
something that will go on for ever and ever.

Paul says the
same thing, in Romans 8:38-39: ‘I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life . .
. shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus
our Lord.’ This is something no one can rob us of, so that whatever may
happen to us in this life and world, we have this grand and glorious security.
We may be tried and tested and feel ourselves shaking and almost going under,
but we have this eternal guarantee behind us.

The work which His goodness began

The arm of His strength will
complete,

His promise is yea and amen

And never was forfeited yet.

AUGUSTUS TOPLADY

This is a life
that will go on to all eternity; so what we are offered here is a
foretaste---these are New Testament terms. We taste the first fruits, so that
here on earth, according to this promise, I can begin the great feast that will
keep me through the countless ages of all eternity. What a wonderful truth, that
here in this world of time I can already sit at the banqueting table and begin
to partake and go on without end.

But let me
remind you again of what this means. To have eternal life means, as John
has reminded us in the third chapter, that I shall see God. If I have this
life, I shall see Him; I shall see Christ as He is, and I shall stand in His
presence. It is only those who have His nature and share His life and who
have been born again who will go on to that; and those who have it will see Him
and will be like Him, and they will spend their eternity in glory with Him,
enjoying it in His glorious presence.

I remind you of
these things, my friends, in order that I may urge anyone who is uncertain to
make certain. Would you not like to know you are destined for these things;
would you not like to enjoy them here and now? ‘That is what is offered,’ says
John, ‘that you may know it now and not lose a second.’ But it also helps us
in a very practical sense in that if I know I have eternal life already, then I
know there is a great life principle working in me. ‘Work out your own
salvation,’ says Paul, ‘with fear and trembling: for it is God which worketh in
you. . .‘ And if He is in me in this life, He is working in me ‘to will and to
do of his good pleasure’ (Philippians 2:12-13). He is sanctifying me; He is
getting things out of my life because He has destined me for that glory; and
having destined me for that glory, He will fit me for it.

I have the
assurance, therefore, that if this work has begun, the work will end. I ‘know’
that if I have eternal life, I shall stand one day faultless and blameless,
without spot and blemish, in the presence of God’s glory. So as I meet
temptation and sin in this world, I realise that I am not left to myself. I
cease to feel helpless and frustrated. I say, ‘If God is in me, if God has
destined me for that, then He will come and hold me though all hell and the
devils be opposed to me.’ That was the mightyargument of a man like Martin Luther. It
was because he knew he had eternal life that he could defy all those enemies the
way he did, and all those who have this hope in them can say the same thing.

And were this world all devils o’er

And watching to devour us,

We lay it not to heart so sore;

Nor they can overpower us.

If we have
eternal life and know that we have it, we know that God’s work in our souls will
be carried on until it eventuates in that ultimate perfection and glory. As Paul
puts it in that mighty bit of logic in the middle of the eighth chapter of
Romans, ‘Whom he called, them he also justified; and whom’---you see the
jump---‘he justified, them he also glorified.’ If He starts, He will finish, so
that if the life is in me, I can be certain of the glory. Far from presuming on
that in order to sin, while I am in this life and world I rather say with John,
‘Every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure’ (1
John 3:3). God grant that having listened to these great inducements we all may
know for certain that we have eternal life, the life of God in our souls.
(645-655)